what I did in class today

My students and I were trying to imitate the rhythm and detail of Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That." Here's what I wrote:

You see, I was in a curious position in Syracuse; it never occurred to me that I was living a real life there. I was always there for four or three or two more semesters. One more summer. I had only one more summer to walk the dog up the hill on Genesee with Mary and Paul and decide nightly whether to take a right on Dewitt or Oak or Highland Street. The long, the medium, or the short walk. I lived in limbo between my “home” in Massachusetts and my “home” in Syracuse, between my mother and the friends I’d had since I was ten years old and the friends I’d have for the rest of my life, god willing. But it was another kind of limbo, too. I lived with an eye on tomorrow, on where I’d end up teaching for the next who-knows-how-many years of my life. I’ve forgotten what it was like to live as though I wasn’t living a real life. Now I’m in a position where I cannot say with any certainty that I’m here for three or four or five or six or seven or sixty-three more semesters. In Syracuse I was always on my way out. I’d go to Green Lakes State Park on the weekends with Annabelle. I’d convince Paul to meet me for coffee at Pascale’s on a Saturday morning when we should’ve been reading Bakhtin or revising our third dissertation chapter. I jumped at the chance to meet colleagues at the Empire Grill because I too had heard the rumors that it’d be closing its doors in the spring. I knew we’d look back nostalgically on the celebrations we’d had there for my thirtieth birthday and for Joddy’s thirty-fourth and for Susan finally completing exams. We were at an Irish bar whose name escapes me when Paul told Mary that the scar on her lip made her look butch. That was the night I’d finished exams and all I cared about was whether x would show up to help celebrate.

Now I often feel, when a class is going really well, nostalgia in the present moment. I know I can never get these moments back again, and I want to record them. I want to remember what it felt like to write with my class and to share that writing with them and to feel like we all learned something that day that isn’t recorded in a book.